From Doing Agile to Being Agile: FACES Success Story
One of my earliest memories getting used to the Agile way of doing things was wondering how the scrum ceremonies were always overprioritized. It was always about the daily stand up, refinement, sprint planning and retrospective, without a discussion on the expected outcomes and the mental change needed. I will be honest, to truly enjoy the fruits of the Agile mindset, it is the change of mentality that should come first and, then the process will kick in naturally.
The mobile team at Airasia has gone through its fair share of experiments with Agile, and it was through one of our key initiatives, FACES, when we saw how Agile could speed up things and help cross-functional collaboration in an environment filled with uncertainties and new discoveries. F.A.C.E.S (acronym for Fast Airport Clearance Experience System) is Malaysia’s first facial recognition boarding system, owned and operated by AirAsia, with a goal to introduce a digitised and contactless travel journey so that all of us can fly happy and stress-free in a post-COVID environment.
The Faces initiative was a complicated affair; three different teams involved, numerous uncertainties, tight delivery, and various stakeholders to engage and manage. Moreover, we had to operate in a virtual environment with distributed teams; one of the teams was in the EU, another in Malaysia and one in India. Further, we were working on something that will be soon used by thousands of users and nailing down the USP was critical.
Measure your scrum team’s efficiency by not the output, but by the outcome since those truly define the impact you are having on your customers.
Here are a few steps we took as a team to ensure we were able to weather through this storm:
- Effective grooming sessions — Before planning and execution, great teams groom tickets with the right people involved, a step often overlooked by ordinary Sprint teams. For us, this was the perfect time to bring in all the people together — the design folks, products guys, QA, tech team — Why? First, to avoid back-and-forthing, which in turns leads to consensus, and second, to create a feeling of collaboration amongst the squad.
Our grooming sessions were efficient, resulting in a common vision of what the final result should look like. During our grooming sessions, there was a lot of questioning, which we took in a very open and constructive way. This indeed did result in some time being consumed, but eventually led to transparency and openness, which are the basic principles of Agile.
2. Great daily stand-ups — The daily stand up is a critical validation and verification meeting.
Completed work is shown, blockers are disclosed/discussed, and solutions are suggested. The daily stand up aims to distribute relevant information and/or to make quick decisions which is vital for Sprint to be a success. We had the right folks in our stand up who could help in unblocking processes, and more importantly, the team was willing to find ways to unblock each other.
For example, there were some cases in our flow, which didn’t have designs available initially. Our developers found ways to get the technical implementation done without needing the final design, allowing our design folks to come up with a solution without blocking the developers. These mutual decisions ensured that despite the uncertainties we had, we never had major blockers or delays. Our stand ups also gradually became a medium for our team to showcase finished work and quickly align.
3. Stakeholder management: Or as I call — stakeholder engagement. I always believe in over-communicating rather than under-communicating and the same mantra helped us sail through here. Ensuring that the right folks are aware of the current status and progress is critical to avoid last-minute surprises. As a Product Manager, I engage with my stakeholder through frequent demos, sharing builds and even giving an informal rundown of the current progress. Further, keeping proper communication channels is also of paramount importance in this virtual era of working from home. It is so crucial to ensure that everyone has high visibility over blockers, hiccups and resource constraints; this also ensures that your efforts are in the right direction and more importantly, you avoid giving stakeholders last minute shocks.
4. Extreme ownership — We have highly skilled QA’s in our team; however, quality doesn’t come from a single person, instead, it comes when the team takes ownership of what they deliver. We had our designers trying out the daily builds to verify changes, developers doing self-verification, the product team trying the builds and receiving feedback from stakeholders. We were a strong cohesive unit where we took ownership of what we produced and delivered.
5. Internal and external motivation — I still remember the silence in the room when I shared the expected plan for F.A.C.E.S., a lot of the folks in the room had self-doubts to deliver something within the timelines proposed. It is in moments like these where you need to inject that dose of motivation to spread self-belief. Share the vision and goals, listen to others, understand and discuss the pros/cons, and most importantly, work with each other to find the best solution rather than imposing your solution.
External motivation is all about recognizing and appreciating the work done to achieve the goal. Even a simple shout out during a stakeholder alignment meeting/town hall can work wonders!
6. Retrospect — The essence of Agile is in learning and retrospection. Looking back at what went right and what could have gone better is a subset of the iterative model. Understanding what we lacked and perhaps, how we could have been better prepared/executed better is a key component of the constant improvement/KAIZEN.
Measuring success:
- The Scrum police officer steps in and asks — How many stories did we complete? Did we finish an entire epic this sprint? How many features did we roll out?
Unfortunately, Our Answer to all those questions is a No (well, not for all, but I hope you get the point :P ). However, are these the right questions to ask? - Did you nail the priority down ? Were you guys able to demonstrate finished work and solicit feedback? Will the product be able to make life of our customers better? Will this release add value and make an impact? If these are the questions thrown at us, then my answer is a resounding Yes.
The emphasis of F.A.C.E.S. on contactless screening technology will help restore the public’s trust in air travel during the COVID-19 pandemic. The one-time process of enrolling into the program sitting from your home via the Airasia super app using can be completed in 3 steps — this truly seamless experience is one of a kind and AirAsia is proud to pioneer this in Malaysia.
I am sure in spite of all those positives, there are things we could have done better. Looking back, we encountered some issues and perhaps, we could have handled the negative cases elegantly, the battle stories of which I will cover in my next article. Stay tuned!
